Category: Archaeology
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Returning to the Classics: A Brief Look at My Non-Career as a Classical Archaeologist as a Trip around the Met Museum
For Heritage UX’s blogging carnival on exhibit interactivity and archaeology, I thought it might been fun to highlight artefacts on display at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City. Why? Well, even though I no longer study as a classical archaeologist, there are a few pieces that I spent a lot of my undergrad year
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American Stonehenge, or the Time that My Friends Took Me on Holiday to Watch My Head Explode
I’ve lived in England for nearly three years now, and yet I have never been to Stonehenge. I feel like that’s a bit embarrassing as an archaeologist, but I just never made the time for it so far! That said, I have been to American Stonehenge. Yeah, that’s a thing. According to the owners of
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There is Power in the Past: Sith Archaeology and Propaganda in Star Wars
Unsurprisingly for a fictional universe that takes place “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away”, there is a fair amount of representation for archaeology in the lore of Star Wars. This is especially true for the Expanded Universe (recently made uncanonical with Disney’s acquisition of the franchise, but still canonical in the
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Doctor, Doctor, Gimme the News: Bone Assessments in Zooarchaeology
Today I wanted to give you all a sneak peek into my current work – although I will admit that this is a bit more of a mundane part of my research. But zooarchaeology isn’t always exciting…sometimes it’s playing Bone Doctor and assessing bags and bags and bags and bags of bones! Last week, I’ve
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From the Question Bag: Fish Remains in Scotland
James Green asked: I know in the US South amia calva is one of the most common fish remains found in sites. What is the most common there? Well, as someone who seems to have been knee-deep in fish bones since 2014, I’m glad you’ve asked! Let me preface this by saying my area of
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A Thanksgiving Blog Post Without Turkeys, ‘Cos I Don’t Have Any Turkey Bones
As an American, I feel a bit obligated to make a themed-post for Thanksgiving. But here’s the problem: I don’t have any turkey bones in my collection. So, what’s a zooarchaeologist blogger to do? Well, the next best thing: here’s a minipost looking at the bones of domestic fowl and why it’s important to differentiate
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Bones That Look Like Other Bones: A MiniPost About Rodents and Fish
Yet another minipost in my comparative anatomy series! But this one might be the strangest paring of all. Rodents and fish – could there be any more different animals? And yet, I find that students just starting out in archaeology tend to confuse the two together. To be fair, it’s very understandable – the size
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On The Average Day of a Zooarchaeologist, or “So like, what do you even do?”
There aren’t many zooarchaeologists in my department…in fact, I could probably count the amount of zooarchaeologists in my department on one hand. Which means that most people in my department probably don’t even know what I actually do in my day-to-day work life! Let alone my non-archaeologist friends and family (I’m pretty sure my own
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Spooky, Scary, Inaccurate Skeletons
Happy Halloween from Major Buzzkill! To celebrate, I’m going to ruin everyone’s fun and take a look at a recent trend in Halloween decorations: the inaccurate animal skeletons. Let me preface this by saying I think these decorations are super cute and if I ever get past my ever-growing student debt and get a house,
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On Imposter Syndrome, or What Are We Even Doing?!
With my transfer report coming up within the next month or so, things have been pretty stressful over here. Unfortunately I find myself not having fun poking around things in the lab, but pouring over drafts and corrections and trying to synthesize my transfer report*. So I figured this might be a good time to
Animal Archaeology 